When Maurice Watson Jr. was lost for the season, the entire country knew things would never be the same.

Sure, the team-first ethos remained intact. Sure, the program-record 18-1 start to the season wouldn’t simply vanish. This was still an outfit equipped with a potential lottery pick in the upcoming NBA draft (Justin Patton) and one of the best two-way players in the country (Khyri Thomas).

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But the way buckets and possessions were manufactured or procured would need to be entirely recalibrated -- Creighton was losing the NCAA active career assist leader, after all. As junior guard and leading scorer Marcus Foster said Monday after practice, “We had to reinvent our whole team.”

An offense that had oscillated between the 95th and 100th percentiles in points per possession and numerous advanced metrics never seemed so fragile.

“I think people were willing to throw some dirt on Creighton,” said Ken Pomeroy, originator of the nationally renowned KenPom.com. “They talked about their chances in the NCAA Tournament a little prematurely.”

Some of those prognostications were founded. “We had to adjust a lot,” Thomas said Monday.

Creighton is indeed averaging an assist fewer per contest without Watson. The Bluejays had piled up triple digits in the scoring column four times as of mid-January. They have yet to eclipse the mark since.

The obstacle -- reinventing an offensive ecosystem -- was, to writers both local and national, one that possibly was insurmountable. It certainly hasn't been an easy transition.

The glimmering 18-1 record has grayed to 25-9 and a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Final Four hopes are now a long shot; Creighton has a 3 percent chance of reaching it, according to FiveThirtyEight. Many publications -- SB Nation, ESPN, USA Today, Yahoo! Sports and NBC Sports, to name a few -- have pegged Creighton as the trendy upset pick of the opening round.

Although the timing couldn't have been worse for Creighton, let's be clear: This is hardly the first team a team lost its starting point guard when it mattered most.

When asked for a recent example of a team that found national success despite losing its starting floor general, Pomeroy noted that North Carolina was able to reach Elite 8 in 2012, despite losing starting point guard Kendall Marshall, who ranked second nationally in assists per contest (by 0.1 assists), with a broken bone in his right wrist. Coincidentally, the injury occurred against Creighton in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.

“They did get to the Elite 8,” Pomeroy reiterated, before acknowledging the talent disparity between the 2017 Bluejays and the 2012 Tar Heels, which featured seven future NBA players on the roster. Creighton, for context, has had 13 players in program history reach the NBA.

“So that makes things not fair,” he said, laughing, “but that was a similar situation where he got hurt and people were like, ‘Oh, their chances are over.’”

With the opening round of the NCAA Tournament less than a week away, Pomeroy has a suggestion for the Bluejays: Chase offensive balance, however amorphous the concept may seem.

“I think to make a really deep run, a serious run -- Final Four, national championship --you need more balance,” he said. “But they actually have more of that balance this year. That’s one way where they differ from Doug McDermott’s seasons; they don’t take as many 3s as they used to.”

He isn’t wrong: In 2014, the last time the Bluejays reached the NCAA Tournament, Creighton manufactured 38.3 percent of its points from beyond the arc, a mark that ranked third nationally, 12.1 percentage points higher than the national average.

This season, Creighton is getting 32 percent of its points from beyond the arc, 1.6 percentage points higher than the national average. When Watson went down with a torn ACL, Creighton had been taking 21.5 3-pointers per contest. Since, they’re taking 22.3.

“They’re obviously not the same team without Watson,” Pomeroy said.

As Neil Greenberg, of The Washington Post, noted, citing research conducted by Ed Feng, only one team since 2002 -- Villanova in 2016 -- “took a significantly higher percentage of field goals from beyond the 3-point line than the collegiate average.” This was only possible because coach Jay Wright walked back that average by seven percentage points once the tournament began.

After advancing past the opening round of the 2014 NCAA Tournament, Baylor held Creighton to a season-worst 5-for-24 performance from beyond the arc, throttling the Bluejays by 30 points. The team's calling card ended up caving.

“Us trying to dictate our tempo is going to be important,” head coach Greg McDermott said this week. Indeed, only eight teams run faster possessions than Creighton, which takes an average of 14.9 seconds per.

What’s far more worrisome this time around, though, is Creighton’s inability to get to the free throw line. Just 14.1 percent of team points come from the charity stripe, a mark that ranks dead last among power-conference teams nationally. Only one Big East team, Marquette, has attempted fewer free throws.

That becomes pivotal in late-game situations, and the disparity can be crippling. In a loss to Seton Hall in February, Creighton allowed the Pirates to take 39 free throws, while the Bluejays only attempted 13. Creighton was minus-16 in the free-throw battle against Villanova in late February and minus-10 against Villanova in early March.

“In the postseason,” Patton explained, “it’s a lot different; everyone knows your strengths and weaknesses, so you’ve just got to go out there and play.”